There was a kid in my class who stood up every day and told everyone he had new shoes. This went on for weeks, and we all thought him nuts. Then, one day, he stood up and told us a long story about why his family were moving to another part of the country, and how excited he was. The next thing we heard was that he'd died in a plane crash.

I'd like to tell you about a childhood friend of mine, who upon reflection was very strange, but at the time was the best friend a child could have.

His name was Andrew and as well as the psychological peculiarities, he had several strange physical traits as well:

1: His air grew at exactly a 45 degree angle; every hair on his head pointed in the same direction. 2. He walked using toe-heel instead of heel-toe 3 . In times of distress he took comfort by biting his knuckles.

Andrew would only eat boiled carrots peas and mince, and had that for dinner every single night of his life. His parents let him watch 'The Exorcist', 'Predator' and 'Terminator' when he was 11. He shared a bedroom with his older brother, who always slept nude and Andrew nicknamed him 'The Master Blaster'. His bed had bricks under one end, and was covered with a rubber sheet, to allow easy drainage for the frequent times Andrew would piss himself in the night. He said he had a pond in his garden but it was really a Walls ice cream tub filled with rain water and shit where Andrew used to squat over it. He believed the Terminator lived in his dads tool shed and would never go near it. He must have had some mixed up DNA, or given off some kind of pheromones as dogs would chase him wherever he went.

He had a number of trademark phrases that would make Bruce Forsythe ashamed. We all remember them to this day, especially the unique tone and cadence he used when he said them.

In the canteen he would order a "jack-podado...budder 'n' cheese", alternating from a very high to a very low pitch after every 2nd syllable. When excited he would bite his knuckle and sing "ne-ne-ne-ne-neeeeee" repeatedly for hours on end. When he saw a woman with big boobs he would shout "breasts so big as I am". We had another friend whose surname was Keane, and who was a bit chubby, so Andrew used to call him 'Juicy Keaney'. Andrew would sit in class, rubbing his thighs and rocking back and forth, saying with his slight speech impediment 'Juishy Keaney... Juishy Keaney' over and over. One day Juicy Keaney came up to Andrew and said 'if you call me Juicy Keaney one more time, I will rip your arms off and beat you to death with the soggy ends'. Andrew said in a remorseful tone 'don't do dat Juishy Keaney......oopsh'.

Andrew was once indecently assaulted in the alley way behind his home, and I was round his house when he told the police officer about the 'white stuff coming out of the mans willy'. This shouldn't really be funny, it just is.

Andrew genuinely believed he was a ninja, and that it was his destiny to slay the troll population that lived underground in the park. He made a costume which consisted of a pair of swimming goggles with the red and blue lenses from 3D glasses sellotaped into them, black pyjamas, and black gloves, with a big cardboard sign stuck to his back that said DDD. He made this up to stand for 'deadly, dark and dare-some', and he arranged a kind of secret handshake with me, only it was more like semaphore, where we would make signals with our hands and arms whilst saying "triple D". This was the only way to be sure our bodies hadn't been possessed by the spirit of a troll. He frequently used to run around the park trying to find the secret entrance to the troll cave, until he got too scared and pissed himself.

Eventually he moved far away, but I went to visit him years later, wondering if he would have changed at all. When I got to his house he had his pet rat in his pants. Nope, same old Andrew.
(Donkey Gums@mattcomedy, Fri 19 Jan 2007, 10:54,
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